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Many of Martins Bank’s larger
city centre branches are known to those who work there as “City Office”. They
offer the services of a branch, but they are, with the exception of Bristol
City Office, housed in the same building as one of the District Offices.
Customers therefore benefit from the local decision-making powers of the
District Office, and are able to do their everyday banking in the same place.
Outside Liverpool, 68 Lombard Street London Office is the largest city
branch, and on this page, we look at the history of the building, and present
our usual gallery of the faces of some of those who work there. According to
tradition, first a goldsmith's and then a banking business has been carried
on - at the sign of the Grasshopper on this site - since 1563. The present
building at 68 Lombard Street was built by Martins Bank in 1930, and it
functions both as a City Office Branch and as the London District Office of
the bank.
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In Service: 1563 under various names including several Martins until 3
April 1981
Image © Barclays Ref 0009-0617
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1917
Martin’s Private Bank Letterhead
Thanks
to S Mann
Image © Martins Bank Archive Collections
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Top:
1905 Martin’s Private Bank Logo from Cheque
Bottom:
1917 Grasshopper from Letterhead
Image © Martins Bank Archive Collections
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In its role as the bank’s
principal London Office, 68 Lombard is also home to a number of centralised
departments, several of which are concerned with the Bank’s experiments
with NEW TECHNOLOGY. Lombard Street is itself so narrow, that it is
practically impossible to obtain a front view photograph of No 68. The
photograph (right) which we took at sunset in the of Summer 2009, shows
just how magnificent this building - which hasn’t been a bank since 1983 -
still is…
The site at 68 Lombard is so steeped in history, that in
1930 Martins Bank publishes a booklet whose main purpose is to explain just
why the building has to be pulled down and rebuilt! See also THE REBUILDING OF 68 LOMBARD ST. The booklet
itself however serves also as a useful guide to the history of the site.
The text is reproduced below, along with some of the images that show the
history of banking at the sign of the grasshopper, from its beginnings with
Sir Thomas Gresham in 1563…
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 Image © Martins Bank
Archive Collections – Julie Snowden 2009
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 ARTINS BANK
has been compelled by the needs of modern business to pull down a structure
full of old associations, and covering the sites of many ancient houses,
offices, and taverns, in order to erect a new building capable of meeting
the demands of the present time. With the help of the Architect, Sir
Herbert Baker, an attempt has been made to preserve the old traditions, in
the belief that those who do business in the twentieth century at the sign
of the Grasshopper will be interested in the past records of what may well
be the oldest Banking House in the City of London.
  Lombard Street has been the financial centre of
London from the earliest times, and is mentioned by name in a Charter of
Edward II in 1319, confirming certain land "abutting on Lombard Street
to the South and towards Cornhill on the North" for the Merchants of
Florence. These Italian Merchants, or Lombards, were the chief rivals of
the Jews in transacting the financial affairs of Europe, and the head of a
Lombard wearing the traditional cap of his race is carved on the keystone
of the centre window of the third floor. Today Lombard Street denotes the
London Money Market and a mythical figure of a Discount Broker is carved
above the door in Change Alley East, with a classical inscription showing
the respect of the Market for the Bank. By the reign of Henry VII this
quarter was so well established as the meeting place of the principal
merchants, that a proposal that they should move from Lombard Street to
Leadenhall Street was negatived by the Common Council.
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A
few years later Sir Richard Gresham tried to establish an Exchange in
Lombard Street but it was left to his more celebrated son, Sir Thomas
Gresham, to found the Royal Exchange on the North Side of Cornhill.
  Sir Thomas Gresham,
a Mercer and not a Goldsmith, was the trusted agent of Mary and Elizabeth
in the low countries and has always been considered the first English
Banker to understand the working of the Foreign Exchange. From him is
derived the sign of the Grasshopper which hangs from the wall to this day.
In the i6th century the houses in a street were distinguished by signs - the houses in Lombard Street were not numbered until
1770 – and Gresham used his family Crest to mark his residence in the City. The exact date
of his acquiring this site is not certain
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The
Entrance Hall
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Tradition
has it that a Banking business has been carried on here since 1563, but we
know that he lived here in 1560, for in April of that year he wrote to
Cecil "I have commanded my factor Candellor to be with you by VI of
the clocke in the morning every morning, for that I have no man ells to do
my business and to keep Lombard Street." About this time the name of
Martin first appears in the lists of prominent citizens of London. In 1558
Richard Martin was called to the livery of the Goldsmiths Company, and in
1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, he served as Lord Mayor and was
knighted. He was also Master of the Mint from 1572 until his death in 1617,
and without doubt he had frequent transactions with Gresham, thus beginning
the association of the Martin family with the Grasshopper, which has
continued to the present day.
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The
Parlour
Garraway’s
Coffee House
The
Board Room
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The
Coats of Arms of the families of Gresham and Martin are carved above the
two large windows in the Lombard Street facade. Owing to the destruction of
almost all the Title Deeds of this part of the City in the Great Fire of
1666, and the loss of the remaining early records of the Bank in 1825 in
the disastrous fire in the Royal Exchange, where they had been deposited
for safety, it is difficult to trace accurately the occupation of the
Grasshopper during the first half of the 17th Century. We know that Edward
Backwell, a prominent Goldsmith, carried on his business at the Grasshopper
and at the adjoining property, the Unicorn, from 1662 until 1672, when King
Charles II laid hands on nearly £300,000 of Backwell's money, which
with that of other Goldsmiths, had been deposited in the Exchequer. Samuel
Pepys, the Diarist, kept his account with Backwell, and it is probable that from 1672 until 1680, when he transferred his
business to Mr. Richard Hoare of Fleet Street, he kept an account with
Charles Duncombe, Backwell’s. successor, who appears to have had timely
warning of the closing of the Exchequer. He had formerly been Backwell's
apprentice and took over Backwell's lease of the Grasshopper and of the
Unicorn, carrying on a Goldsmiths business in partnership with Richard Kent
and later with his brother, Valentine. The Goldsmiths were by this time
beginning to do a regular Banking business as we now understand it, and in
a supplement to "The Little London Directory" published in 1677, there
appears a list of "Goldsmiths that keep running cashes."
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Among
these are mentioned " Charles Duncombe and Richard Kent, of the
Grasshopper in Lombard Street." Pepys in his Diary has a few words to
say of their transactions, complaining of " the Goldsmith's shops,
where people are forced to pay 15 or sometimes 20 per cent, for their
money, which is a most horrid shame, and that which must not be
suffered." In this connection it is interesting to note that
certain books of account, which in these days of machine accounting go by
the prosaic name of Waste Books, were, until a very few years ago, known as
the Goldsmiths Books. In 1686, the name of Richard Smythe appears as a
partner of the Duncombes and Kent, and his portrait, attributed to
Huyssmann, is hung over the fire-place in the Parlour.
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Before
his death in 1699 Richard Smythe took into partnership a connection of his
wife's, Andrew Stone, and also engaged as Clerk, Thomas Martin, who became
a partner four years later. From this time until 1852, when Mr. George
Stone left the firm, the business at the Grasshopper was mainly conducted
by members of these two families, and the present Chairman of the London
Board is a representative of the sixth generation of the family whose name
is preserved in the title of the Bank. On the ceiling of the Parlour appear
the Coats of Arms of Stone and Martin together with those of Gresham and
Backwell, providing an interesting record of those who conducted their
affairs in former centuries in the very place where the Managing Directors
sit together to-day. On the cornice round the Banking Hall the old names
mark the sites of the original buildings, which one by one have been added
to the Bank during the last two hundred years. The frieze above is decorated with the
Coats of Arms of Trading and Livery Companies, with which those who carried
on their business in these buildings were connected. On the Walls of the
Entrance Hall are displayed the Fire Arms which were kept in the 18th
century to protect the valuables of the Bank and its customers. Today the
Bank's reserve of Notes is kept in reinforced concrete Strong Rooms on the
second and third floors below the ground. It is interesting to compare the
old method of keeping the reserves of gold and silver shown in the folio
wing Cash Statement of two hundred years ago. The "Little Iron Chest"
mentioned is now to be seen in the Banking Hall.
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The
firm of Stone and Martin in 1706 only rented the Grasshopper, which
extended over little more than the present Parlour, and it was not until
1741 that James Martin purchased the freehold, together with that of the adjoining
property, The Three Crossed Daggers. At the beginning of the 18th Century
the space afforded by the Royal Exchange had become too limited to
accommodate the men of business who frequented it, and Change Alley, with
its numerous taverns and Coffee Houses, became the centre of the
speculative activity which ended with the collapse of the South Sea Bubble
in 1720.
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Bakers
Chop House
Thomas
Garraway is said to have established here the first Tea House in London,
and in Swift's poem " The South Sea Project" Garraways is referred
to as the headquarters of the dealers and brokers who preyed upon the
public. Defoe too, in 1722, speaks of Garraways as the haunt at Mid-day of
people of quality who had business in the City. Later it became a noted
Auction Room, before, in 1866 it was acquired by Messrs. Glyn & Company
and finally in 1874 passed to Martin and Co. in exchange for The Plough,
No. 67, Lombard Street, which had been bought by James Martin nearly a
hundred years previously.
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68
Lombard Street before the 1930 rebuild
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In
1700 Garraways Coffee-House abutted westwards on the Crown Alehouse, and beyond
this, at the corner of Change Alley, stood the Exchange Tavern. To the
south of these lay Bakers Chop House, formerly known as the Rummer Tavern.
The freehold of all these properties was acquired by Martin and Co. in 1882
and 1884, but Bakers Chop House kept its identity until only ten years ago
when the increase of business made it essential that this last survivor of
many taverns should be thrown into the Offices of Martins Bank.
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The
Unicorn, which had parted company from the Grasshopper after the time of
Backwell and Duncombe, changed hands on many occasions, but finally after a
lapse of over two hundred years was bought by Martin and Co. in 1890. The
other old Inn whose name is inscribed on the wall of the Banking Hall, is
The White Horse, which after several changes of ownership is now occupied
by Martins on a long lease from their neighbours, Lloyds Bank.
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The changes and
the steady growth of the premises are of little account when compared with the
expansion of the business. The Goldsmiths shop developed into the private
Banking Firm, and in 1890 this became Martin's Bank, Limited. In 1918 the
name was changed again, the Bank of Liverpool and Martins being the title
assumed on the amalgamation of Martins Bank with the Bank of Liverpool. The
incorporation of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank in 1928 led to the
shortening of this unwieldy title. In the Bank's Coat of Arms the Liver Bird
representing Liverpool is associated with the Grasshopper, while the old
historical traditions of Lombard Street are preserved in the name of Martins
Bank.
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